


Pale and Dreaming

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Hemospectrum, I'm Not Sure This Actually Counts as JohnKat, Insomnia, Karkat Is Damaged, Nighmares, Oneshot, Psychological Trauma, Quadrant Confusion, Someone Please Cuddle Karkat Right Now
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-17
Updated: 2014-02-17
Packaged: 2018-01-12 19:07:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1196160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karkat Vantas has run away.  But that's fine, because he's okay.  He's okay, and he doesn't lie.  Not unless it's important, which is just the perfect loophole after all.<br/>But he's okay.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pale and Dreaming

Some nights Karkat wakes up to walls of red pressing in on him, reverberating. Red sound, red smell, red color—he can’t breathe. It swells down his lungs. Can’t think. _Don’t_ think. He doesn’t exist, it’s just this red wearing his skin, crushing his skin.  
  
His color and the human color are both red. Death and failure and fear and anger and _lies._ How many lies has he told? Take Vriska and double the number. Ha! Look, they have something in common after all. And he’ll be wrapped up, it’s wrapped around him, _in_ him, suffocating him like the barkbeast born with its limbs missing and its eyes melted—the one tied in a sack and thrown in the river. Put it out of its misery. (Out, out, out.) It sinks into his pores and he can’t get it **out.** He can’t bleed enough to stop it. He can’t begin to bleed. It’ll just find him again, won’t it? Red wells out in tides of anger. And he gets scared, so stupidly scared, because he’s a coward and he deserves this.  
  
Karkat isn’t like this usually. You kidding? Such a piece of work, just sometimes. He’s fine, okay. Nothing to worry about. But something sparks in his thinkpan in that place between awake and asleep, when he’s too heavy to start screaming. (Because he’s a coward.) Because he has nightmares. Everyone has nightmares.  
  
He’s used to the nightmares the horrorterrors whisper to him, or the reflections of his own fears. Seeing the faces of the friends and family that he has failed—he expects it. Man up and face it, Vantas. You did this. No, don’t look away. Fix your eyes straight ahead and sneer.  
  
Yes, he’s over those wounds. They’ve made their scars. And this is different.  
  
When he drags himself free from this (the fucking _color_ ), he’s not bloodthirsty enough to rend his claws into the wall and imagine his sweat is the sizzle of spilled blood. He’s not in hysterics, not sobbing into his knees in a corner, desperate for his moirail (his lusus). Not shaking with a fear so thick he can’t cry, can’t speak, can’t do anything but wait for it to get off of him. It’s not that kind of fright; it’s not being hunted in the dark. It’s…  
  
What is it? Hard to say.  
  
It’s that when he wakes up from those dreams, Karkat doesn’t know who he is, or where. There is no Karkat Vantas anymore. He bolts awake and stares and tries to feel. There should be something there, right? Deep breaths, keep them coming. Sensation—taste, touch, sight, smell. Hearing his own breaths. Rhythmic, alive, and reminding him that there should be something else, but it’s missing. The redness eats him whole and doesn’t leave much behind.  
  
Well fuck, it’s probably the first signs of illness, isn’t it? His pan is rotting like Gamzee’s did. He can’t take the heat, the Game, the pressure. Too weak—or maybe this is another gift of his mutation? Maybe these are his misshapen legs, his melted eyes. His pan could be blistering and chewing on itself for all he knows. That’d make him a time bomb in more than one way. Good. Great. Widen his blast radius.  
  
(Oh god oh please no no no)  
  
Because he knows that something is very broken when he lies still for hours, eyes open, struggling to remember. How it _feels_ to watch your friends cut down in front of you and have your skin trying to split open with theirs. He tries to hurt enough to grieve, and tries to bleed. He knows he’s still in there somewhere. He can hear Karkat breathing.  
  
He thinks it takes him longer to feel again each time. He thinks it’s getting worse. One red dream has turned into four, wrenching at him even when he’s awake now. He’s getting slower, or maybe Karkat doesn’t want to come back into this sorry heap of skin anymore, Past Him never liked him much anyway, it’s his fault. Their fault. Starts with pins and needles—he’ll smile or frown, his brow will wrinkle, his fingers will twitch. Feeling comes back falteringly, like it’s afraid he’ll kick it away. He doesn’t, he grabs, he takes it in totally and gorges himself (which leads to the charming event that is a complete nervous breakdown, reveling in all his agonies, tearing himself apart, hurting and screaming with laughter because yes, this is what he wanted. This is who he is. Don’t look away, you fucking coward.)  
  
Who’s actually surprised that Karkat’s subconscious is trying to hack those scars away? Show of hands. Don’t be shy.  
  
So you know what? Karkat doesn’t sleep around anyone. He can control himself if it’s a normal nightmare—but _fuck_ , not if it’s a red dream. And when he can’t help it, because yes, even he gets too tired to keep his eyes open… He knows how to hide—  
  
He’s practiced for this moment of truth all his life—  
  
He skulks like it’s a competitive sport—  
  
No one surprises him. No one finds him when he is unprepared to deal with them. No one looks for him. No one.  
  
John Egbert is an asshole.  
  
Yeah, just in general. No one needs to be that cheerful during the apocalypse unless they’re unhinged or mocking you or both (god, it’s both isn’t it?), and he has the gall to be immortal now and not even abuse that, what is _wrong_ with him? He’s already broken Karkat’s shriveled six-sweep little bloodpusher, and Karkat by all rights ought to want nothing to do with him. It’s complicated, though. Because John just smirks at him and suddenly they’re firing the parting shots of a three hour conversation and Karkat is left wondering where his afternoon went and why he let it run out on him.  
  
John Egbert is also an asshole because you’d have to search hard to find the places Karkat tucks himself away for sleeping these days, and here he is. Staring. Karkat’s sluggish mind registers his smile, which gets slung across his face like a bowling ball, strikes out in terms of making John not look like he has multiple mental deficiencies. Karkat is huddled on the ground, tucked into an alcove between machinery, his claws wedged in tight in case he wakes up bloodthirsty. He’s staring back at John. He is not thinking: _What the fuck?_  
  
Or: _Go the hell away!_  
  
Or: _Please help me please make it stop please please please_  
  
Because he is not thinking anything at all. His heartbeat drips in his ears, and his eyes are flooded with a color he does not want.  
  
John floats practically into Karkat’s lap to greet him. “Hey, buddy! What are you doing in here?” And then he’s off—babbling about something to do with Dave and a lost tennis ball and the prank of a lifetime. His enthusiasm makes him so laughable. Karkat hears about half of it.  
  
John should not be painted in red, Karkat has thought. He’s hoped fervently that he never sees the color on John’s skin, ever. Or if he does, make it pathetic and stupid, make it the death of a barkbeast in a river. John will come back from that, he’s god tier, he’s. He’s red. Karkat’s thoughts are shorting out. He wants to close his eyes.  
  
In some other headspace, Karkat hates red getting on John. Right now, Karkat is too busy trying to bleed his bloodpusher out to care. He stares ahead, all emptied out. Someone took an ice cream scoop to his soul.  
  
(It was probably Karkat, don’t call him back into this body. It hurts.)  
  
“Sleeping with your eyes open, huh?” John’s narrative trails off. He gives a sheepish laugh and rubs the back of his neck. “Ah. So trolls do that. I kind of look like an idiot now, don’t I?” This is his cue to fly off and join people who will laugh and smile and argue with him. Karkat stares blankly. Gradually, John flutters lower, until he’s sitting on the ground in front of Karkat’s knees. John sighs out a long, heavy breath.  
  
He sounds tired. His foot prods Karkat’s, nearly a pap, and his hair flutters. “When you wake up, let’s have fun, okay?” He says. His voice is warm, even if it no longer sounds like it has an abusive relationship with caffeine. “I’ll protect you until then. Sheesh, Karkat, how come you’re even sleeping all the way out here?”  
  
It never for a minute occurs to him that it might be because John isn’t wanted, but that’s okay. Karkat feels his pins and needles.  
  
Yes, this is where Karkat exists. It doesn’t do much good to hear himself breathe. He doesn’t like the color red, after all. He doesn’t like _himself_ very much.  
  
John’s breathing is a lullaby to horror and mist. Karkat lets his heart fill with everything warm and selfless and moonlight-lovely. Pins and needles, pins and needles. His hysterics are a soft sigh and the deep desire to never move, never touch this warmth and send it someplace else. His hysterics are an outpouring of love so deep he thinks it must be audible and he says, “John.”  
  
A piece of his bloodpusher falls back into place and he doesn’t think he’ll dream of red again. Not for a while. (Never?) John tilts his head up and grins. Karkat thinks it might be okay not to run away.


End file.
